Stating the obvious

Josh, per usual, hits the nail on the head:

It is also not too early to point out that the evidence is there for the confluence of two destructive and disastrous forces -- hawks in the administration's Cheney faction whose instinctive bellicosity is only matched by their actual incompetence (a fatal mixture if there ever was one), and the president's chief political aides who see the build up to an Iran confrontation as the most promising way to contest the mid-term elections. Both those groups are strongly motivated for war. And who is naive enough to imagine a contrary force within the administration strong enough to put on the brakes?

I'd add to this volatile cocktail an unstable, fundamentalist theocratic regime in Tehran who may see provoking a confrontation with the United States as a way to bolster public support:

ElBaradei’s overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders “want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side”—in Washington.

>snip<

“The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,” the European intelligence official told me. “He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.” An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the U.S.

This does not inspire confidence.